Mediocrity + Confession + Poetry: Your Solitary Hunt

I know it’s not a healthy habit, but I am fully aware of the “mediocrity” of my works. Well, most of them are, or so I tell myself. I am aware that even those that I deem strong enough to walk the open world on their own are revealed to be misshapen and malformed, as they are replicas of my soul. But that is ok.

I have lost track of the number of works great and small that I have written and left with the many women whom I have been with. It is my fervent wish though, that they still cherish those moments, even if it leaves the taste of ashes on their mouths.

I have never been fully aware of what power good or evil my so called poetry has brought forth in to this world. Many have complimented me, so much more than those who condemn me, and to batting an average of 6 out 10, I guess I could say that I am not doing that bad for an old guy.

I have been accused, and I confess to some extent, of using my poetry as mere bait, as traps. The funny thing is that those that I did fashion as baits and traps did not catch anything at all. Instead, it was the other works who were set out free to fly as birds do were the ones responsible of bringing back someone new to me.

I never really knew how powerful poetry could be, even my own. Even when I was found in the arms of a woman, whose very arms were brought to me by the wings of my free poetry, I really was without a clue as to the power of words, of creation.

That is, until I received my first poem.

This one comes from my brother, lazarusmoth, and as brothers are, he sees through the bone. And as competent as my brother is in his craft, as the poem below would show you, I and my craft being the theme of the poem affords me to have a smile on my face, that amidst the mediocrity of my own choosing, I am still worth something.

And now, the masterpiece:

Your Solitary Hunt

I remember the way you can sit down on the rough

steps and write your hunched verses,

the way each jagged stroke burns

black ink in the page,

paper trembling a staccato silence, a bird clasped

in the firm hands of a child,

fear in every heartbeat.

I remember the way you set your traps and stalk

every word, the way you lose the world

in your solitary hunt.

Spiral of predator and prey,

spilled blood, fire and pitchforks

in your poetry.

I remember your frantic gestures for a cigarette,

your eyes locked on the chase of wayward words,

fingers groping fire.